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9/11, Name of

We had to call it something.

On September 11 itself, the attacks needed no label.
“The Towers,” “the planes”—all sufficed. Soon
enough, that changed. The next morning in the New
York Times, an op-ed piece by Bill Keller was titled“America’s Emergency Line: 9/11.” (When so many of us were thinking of firemen and cops, those three digits were doubly resonant.) The Washington Post’s
Hank Stuever, on September 13, made it explicit:
“Consider the date, 9/11, which reads as 9-1-1, which
is keypad-speak for: Oh God no, help, please. Perhaps
the day could simply be called Nine One One.”

In the early weeks of coverage, the term appeared
more often in quotes than in newspapers’ own prose.
That first month in the Times, the shorthand “September
11” showed up just once, and “9/11” did not
appear again. The more demotic New York Post published
a quote on September 18 that may mark the
moment when “9/11” began to slip into the vernacular:
A rabbi said, “No one in our city remains untouched.
September 11—9/11—has marked us forever.”
On October 5, it showed up, straightforwardly
as we now use it, in a Chicago Tribune headline. William
Safire, in the Times, pointed out that “December
7,” that previous date of infamy, had gradually become
known as simply “Pearl Harbor Day,” and wondered
whether that might happen here.

It didn’t. Since then, the unornamented date has
become the default name for a horrifying event. The
London attacks of 2005 became 7/7. The Madrid attacks
of 2004 became 3/11 (in the U.S., anyway; over
there, they’re 11/3, or 11 de marzo, or 11-M). It is a
denatured, bloodless reference, which may be the
point. It’s also ugly on the page: more license plate
than word, a little too glib and telegraphic for something
so monstrous. No matter. The hive mind made
its decision, and to whine about that is itself glib and
inappropriate.